Re: Suggestion: Skip Slink!
On Wed, Jan 06, 1999 at 12:31:30AM -0600, John Goerzen wrote:
> It's always annoying to find that when RedHat/x86 is at 5.1, RedHat/Sparc
> is at 4.2. There are nasty compatibility issues, and obviously Sparc is a
> second-class citizen at RedHat. I don't want this to happen to Debian.
> Debian is bigger and better than that. Debian is a full system that can
> be run on different architectures, not several different systems that
> happen to be hosted at the same FTP network.
You keep using the term "second class citizen" as if it were possible for
"Debian Management" to mistreat the non-i386 arches.
You have to face reality here. There is no entity we can call "Debian
Management." At least not in the sense of a commercial company, where
the management entity has some kind of power over the workers.
For Red Hat, it would be possible to make RH5.1 for i386 and sparc stable at
the same time, simply by ordering the right number of employees to work on
each port. They favour i386 for purely profit and marketing reasons,
because i386 is more popular. Don't jump on me for saying that. It's true.
Debian doesn't do things for public popularity, or for profit. But we also
don't have a management team. You can't order i386 developers to work on
the sparc version, and as a side-effect of i386 being popular, there are a
lot more i386 developers than sparc developers. Therefore i386 gets newer
packages and faster bugfixes, and that's the way it is.
You cannot declare i386 and sparc ports to develop at the same speed merely
by fiat. The only way to speed up the sparc port is to work on it yourself,
or convince others to work on it.
You can, of course, still release the i386 and sparc ports at the same time,
but that's because i386 is later, not because sparc is earlier. That's a
failure, not an improvement. I can see absolutely no advantage in such a
delay.
Have fun,
Avery
P.S. For those just tuning in, yes, I've used the sparc port at work and I
have an alpha running Debian at home.
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